Sagunto calls for two schools and an institute as term starts in Camp de Morvedre
Sagunto is leading calls for two new primary schools and a secondary school as Camp de Morvedre starts the school year amid prefab classrooms and the threat of a teachers' strike.
Two primary schools and one secondary school: that, in two figures, is the main demand behind Sagunto City Council's start to the school year in the district. So says the councillor for Education, Raúl Palmero, who argues that pupil numbers are growing at a pace that no longer allows for temporary fixes and requires "urgent and immediate" action.
The union backdrop is not helping ease the tension either. STEPV, CCOO and UGT called an indefinite strike on 11 May that was put on hold once the previous school year ended, but none of the three unions has ruled out restarting it if the Conselleria d'Educació (the Valencian regional education department) fails to move at the negotiating table.
Meanwhile, Sagunto has relied on stopgap measures to make sure no pupil is left without a place: eight extra classroom units opened last year across different year groups, and five more are already running this year, with room to add up to two more before enrolment closes. Palmero directly links this growth in pupil numbers to the municipality's economic and industrial momentum, warning that new families moving in will keep putting pressure on the school system in coming years unless the regional government plans ahead.
Alongside the request for primary school places sits another significant demand: a new secondary school able to ease the strain on schools already serving both the district capital and the surrounding towns. The Council also lists among its priorities the interior refurbishment of CIPFP Eduardo Merello, the vocational training centre in Puerto de Sagunto, and work that has been pending for years at CEIP Santa Anna in Quartell.
Beyond Sagunto's own boundaries, the picture is no better. CCOO says building work on new schools in Albalat dels Tarongers, Benifairó de les Valls, Faura and Quart de les Valls is barely moving, or has stopped altogether. The worst case is Benavites: although the town's plenary session gave the green light this spring, under the regional Pla Edificant school-building plan, to a new school with a budget of around €2.3 million, the union insists the work "is not even scheduled" and that children are still attending a building in poor condition.
In the classroom, that administrative delay has a very concrete impact: hundreds of pupils across the district went back to school in September in prefab units or facilities that were, in theory, meant to be temporary. Quart de les Valls has now spent four years running in that same position -works tendered, paperwork stuck, no start date- which worries the town's own mayor, Lara González, in particular. Benifairó de les Valls is living through a second consecutive year of the same script, the school in Albalat dels Tarongers will also remain in prefab units, and Petrés still has no date for expanding its two temporary classrooms.
The district's other major flashpoint, almost as persistent as the building works, is the lack of climate control. CCOO argues that neither adjusting the school timetable nor the funding the Conselleria offers for cooling systems is enough to prevent heat stress in classrooms during the hottest stretches, from May to September. On Sagunto's behalf, Palmero is calling for faster renovation of both climate control and electrical systems, adding a less common request: more shaded areas in playgrounds to protect pupils at break time.
For families across Camp de Morvedre, the school year now starting has a very practical impact: those with children enrolled at schools with pending works will keep living, week after week, with prefab classrooms or lessons without cooling on the hottest days, while the authorities negotiate timelines that, according to the unions, keep stretching out year after year. In Sagunto, the enrolment growth behind Palmero's demand is also tied to the municipality's own economic shift, which in recent years has moved from depending almost entirely on traditional steelmaking to also becoming a hub for new industries linked to electric vehicles, bringing young families into the city as a result.
The complaints go beyond desks and thermometers: the Council and the unions also point to accessibility gaps -missing lifts, emergency doors not yet adapted- at several schools. CCOO, for its part, denounces cuts in vocational training, Official Language Schools and childcare places for children under three, blaming these cuts -in a reading that is the union's own- on the regional government (Consell) favouring private providers over the public network.
Francesc Cayo, CCOO's district representative, sums up the mood among teachers: the appetite for pushing for improvements has not faded. The union condenses its demands into four points: smaller class sizes, a bigger teaching workforce, a permanent fix for climate control, and scrapping the regional law known as the "law on educational freedom". CCOO is also calling on families and pupils to join upcoming protests to pressure the Conselleria.
This is not the first time the start of the school year in Camp de Morvedre has come with this same picture. Year after year, parents' associations, unions and school leadership teams repeat very similar complaints about class sizes, building works and climate control, which gives a sense of how hard it is to resolve, in a single school year, a problem that mixes demographic growth, slow administrative procedures and budgets that get released in several separate phases. Anyone wanting to track the progress of a specific project can check the minutes of their own town's plenary sessions, where both the approval of funding and the expected tender deadlines are usually recorded.
With the school year just under way, the question is whether talks progress enough to stop the strike being reactivated before June. In Sagunto, the local government's goal is to consolidate the classroom units already open and keep pressing the regional government for the two schools and the institute it has been requesting for months, while families across the district wait for the promised building works -and labour peace in the classroom- to arrive before the year is out.
According to El Periódico de Aquí — Sagunto / Camp de Morvedre.